


Unraveling

by tosca1390



Category: NCIS
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-08
Updated: 2010-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-14 15:56:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ziva was an entirely new knot to unravel.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Unraveling

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://anatolealice.livejournal.com/profile)[**anatolealice**](http://anatolealice.livejournal.com/), who requested NCIS, Tony/Ziva, Knitting. Set in season three, general spoilers.

*

The first year with Ziva was a long attempt to forget Kate, Kate who had been that nagging sister who had kept Tony honest, tried to keep him grounded.

Ziva, meanwhile, had the ability to pin him to the ground, but brought out his father-inherited urge to boast, to win, to overstate and overwhelm. She watched him with dark foreign eyes, and he never really knew what she was thinking, unlike Kate, and it was an entirely new knot to unravel, a new facet to the game.

Tony carried Kate with him, a dark bird hovering over his shoulder. Ziva was exotic and a mystery and tough as nails, and sometimes he thought there was nothing soft about her. Even Kate had something gentle about her, something he’d seen only in snatches but he still saw. He didn’t know if he could work with someone who had no softness at all, just blunt edges and hard punches and a slicing smile.

In the hard damp winter after Kate’s death, when he still sometimes had to look twice when Ziva was at her desk, the cases were slow but grueling. On a Sunday morning, light grey and limp, he found her hunched at her desk, fingers working at something in her lap. A flash of silver, a streak of red, her curls pouring over her shoulders into the empty space; for a moment, he thought she was carving at her own flesh, trying to find a pulse.

“Whittling?”

She didn’t look up as he settled at his desk. “Whittling is what?”

He curled his fingers around his coffee cup, raising a brow. “Carving wood.”

Her fingers halted, and she looked up then. “I am not doing anything with wood.”

Smirking, he drank deeply from his coffee. “That’s what she said.”

“That is what who said?”

Deep in his middle, he ached for Kate, for her sharp sense. “Never mind,” he muttered. “So what are you doing?”

Mutely, she lifted up her hands. Long needles, red yarn, a block of knitted _something_ that could be a scarf, and he was completely floored. “You knit?”

“Yes,” she said, chin up, eyes defiant. “Is there something wrong with that?”

Her voice was hard, the lines of her body tense, but there was something off about it, something vulnerable in the dark of her eye. In the weak winter light, he looked at her carefully. “No. Just surprised.”

“Why?”

“You don’t seem like the knitting type.”

The lines of her face didn’t change, but he thought he saw a glimmer of resignation, of hurt in her gaze. She shook her curls away from her face, shrugging, her fingers still full of yarn and steel. “It is too womanly for me?”

The Kate he carried with him clucked at him disapprovingly, snapping at him to try and get along, to be kind. He looked away, at his coffee cup, at the papers littering his desk. Ziva was neat like Kate, all her papers in order, her desk clear.

“I don’t know anyone who knits,” he said finally, meeting her gaze once more. “Is it a Moussad thing?”

“Yes. I can kill a man with a knitting needle in five different ways,” she said flatly.

The office, even on a Sunday, began to rustle around them, people passing in and out of his line of vision. “Do you like to knit?”

She set her knitting down on her desk, crossing her arms over her thick black sweater. Her eyes were sharp, but the corners of her mouth softened, and something jarred within him. “It is relaxing and soothing. So yes, I like to knit.”

In that moment, he found something to latch onto within her, to hope for. There was something shaky in her confession, however small, and he smiled slightly. “How girly of you.”

Rolling her eyes, she picked up the yarn and needles and began once more, the sound of needle on needle a gentle clack, almost soothing. He sipped at his coffee and thought of all the ways to mock her, to get her back for the knitting.

Then, the marine in the hospital died, and she started wearing his knit orange cap, and Tony never had the heart to mock the knitting again. He thought Kate would be proud at his restraint, his self control; but really, as much as he wanted to deny it, he liked Ziva, for showing him that small piece of herself.

Maybe, they could be friends after all.

*  



End file.
